To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.

To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.

We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.

The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious, if it injures the conscience it is criminal.

Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.

Man becomes man only by the intelligence, but he is man only by the heart.

Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.

A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety-nine retreat: that is progress.

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.

Time and space are fragments of the infinite for the use of finite creatures.